


No Rest for the Wicked

by Erisabesu (ErisabesuFic)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drama, Dubious Consent, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErisabesuFic/pseuds/Erisabesu
Summary: “The urge doesn’t come all at once; at least not usually.”  [2009.03.03]
Relationships: Juugo/Kimimaro (Naruto)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	No Rest for the Wicked

**“No Rest for the Wicked”**

♦

The urge doesn’t come all at once; at least not usually.

Most of the time Juugo can sense the darkness coming, like the weight and pressure of approaching precipitation, the tickle of ozone hovering in the air. He knows when it’s time to retreat to the isolated cell and lock the reinforced door behind him, and if he happens to miscalculate—at least he’s in a place where the deaths will count for something.

Orochimaru’s need for test subjects will never lessen. It’s his one condition for providing sanctuary, and Juugo agrees, sick to his stomach. He doesn’t want to kill anymore. Orochimaru smiles, and pretends there is a choice while Juugo follows him underground. He steps into the newly constructed, top of the line laboratory and sits in the padded chair, the headrest barely high enough for his neck. He holds out his arm, palm to the ceiling, and permits the cool touch of latex and the stinging bite of the syringe because he knows that this is the only way he will ever be cured.

Most scientists and doctors believe that the best way to change the world is first to understand it. If anyone could understand the madness flowing through his body it would be the legendary Orochimaru, and as Juugo watches his blood fill sample after sample in the assistant’s hands his heart begins to calm. For once, he feels safe. He sees the smirk of satisfaction on Orochimaru’s face, and accepts the lonely room away from everyone else with bars on the door, and he’s certain that he has made the right choice this time.

When the urge to kill snarls up from his gut, fully formed and foaming at the mouth, it’s not something he can fight—nor does he try. From that point on, nothing _matters_. He’ll destroy whatever gets in his way because he can, because all that power makes him unstoppable. Every fearful face in front of him, every weak and shameful counterattack must be ripped to shreds and squeezed to nothing, pounded into a wet porridge and smeared on the walls of the cave as a marker of his victory.

The voices in his mind chant primal songs of carnage and hunger, satisfied only by death—and death is what Juugo gives them, a pile waist high, broken, mute, save for the echo of his insane laughter in this supreme moment of ecstasy.

It happens to him this way the first time he sees Kimimaro.

Orochimaru’s guiding hand on the back of the young man’s shirt; Orochimaru’s eyes glistening with ambition; Orochimaru’s lips curving in delight. Juugo staggers from the sudden intensity of his anger; he drops his lunch tray and _roars_.

The black overtakes him and Juugo kills three people on the way, instantly thundering, slicing, boiling up and out of his skin. Orochimaru turns, and lifts one brow—but makes no move to defend. Juugo growls and swings his meaty fist but the newcomer dances just beyond his grasp and then ducks inside. He climbs up Juugo’s massive body, one foot on his knee, the other balanced on his hip while encircling his throat with two slim hands.

“Stop.”

Juugo does—out of pure shock.

Those hands hold tight while bones protrude from knees and elbows and cut into Juugo’s body, poking past his cursed armor into tender spots. Eyes of jade pierce through Juugo’s bloodlust and reach the man inside, crumbling his impulses apart with the weight of a single word.

Orochimaru’s pleased laughter slithers along the walls and surrounds them; the younger man withdraws and hops down to the stone floor, face expressionless. Juugo collapses to one knee, panting from the exertion of the change, red-tinged sweat seeping along his skin.

“Come, Kimimaro.” Orochimaru holds out his hand, beckoning.

Kimimaro nods and walks away, following obediently.

♦

Juugo wonders what is happening, unable to look away from Kimimaro’s profile, unwilling to let him out of his sight ever since that first encounter. _This one does not belong here with the rest of the monsters._

Juugo follows at a distance, always one corridor behind, never entering a room unless Kimimaro or Orochimaru bids. Kimimaro doesn’t say much to him. Orochimaru keeps a knowing look on his face, one with a hint of amusement. Mostly he lets Kimimaro decide what to do about their puppy-dog shadow; Juugo either sits just inside the door where indicated, or retreats to his cell if told to go back.

He doesn’t like being apart. He’s anxious and edgy. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen if no one is there to stop him; iron bars are not enough to keep everyone else safe. He sits in the corner and wraps his arms around his knees and waits and waits and waits and hopes when the door opens it’s not someone whose insides will soon stain the floor.

Sometimes, not often, he manages to sleep. Kimimaro visits him later, sometimes bringing food, sometimes so exhausted he curls up in the sliver of empty space left on the mattress. Juugo allows him everything save this last—he can’t stand the idea of being near enough to touch—and he shies away.

Kimimaro frowns, and pushes him flat on his back. “Stay still,” he says. “You won’t hurt me.”

Kimimaro falls asleep instantly, Juugo’s waist trapped under that delicate arm. It’s impossible for him to have the same rest while sharing a cot, Kimimaro half his size but so very strong, a deadly fighter but so calming, so important, so precious, so …

In this unfathomable change of routine, Juugo’s inhuman rages subside to a strange new ache and for a time, the world seems _good_.

♦

“Juugo, stay here.” Kimimaro pushes the heavy door closed.

Juugo glances left and right, the room a patchwork of riveted steel and dim reflected light. He hears the sounds of locks clicking shut and chains further caging him in. It’s not a room he’s seen before, so it makes him nervous.

“I won’t be coming to see you for a while.” The voice is muffled by the wall of metal between them.

“Why?” he asks, fisting the front of his shirt.

“Orochimaru-sama will take me for his next vessel. I must change my body to be more suitable—I must become the very best.”

“What do you mean?” Juugo steps forward, feeling the first stirrings of panic. “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry, Juugo. This room will protect you from your fears. You can lose control while I’m gone.”

Juugo’s heart rate increases, sweat pebbling on his forehead and palms. “How can you say that? I don’t want that, I don’t want you to go—”

_“Hush._ ”

Juugo presses his lips closed, but can’t help trembling.

“There’s nothing to worry about. I will come back, and I will be just as strong as you.”

Juugo’s head snaps up. He lunges forward and beats his fist against the metal. “No, no, no! Don’t do it, don’t let him do it—I know about his experiments, and you can’t let him—you can’t be like me, you can’t! _Not you!_ I won’t let him, I won’t let him, I won’t let him!”

“Goodbye, Juugo.”

Juugo blinks through angry tears and screams for him not to go, pounding the door over and over. His skin crawls and splits and changes to something more suited for tearing through barriers and plowing through walls, blackness swarming over his mind like flies on a corpse and burying him under six feet of agony.

♦

_Too soon, it’s over._

Juugo lies for days on the floor in his own filth, haunted by the infinite rows of blood in vials taken from his body on a regular basis. Nearly all who receive the so-called treatments _die_ ; the ones that don’t are cursed to walk the same darkness he does, a slave to vile, wild urges, committing sins without guilt, without conscience.

Juugo recalls the moment he first saw the young man with pure white hair, and understands two things. One, that after the enzymes take hold, the person he knows will no longer exist. And two—that Orochimaru has planned this from the beginning.

Likely from the first needle pricked in his vein.

♦

To Kimimaro, the only changes are good ones.

Juugo’s too used to following him around to stop now, even though Kimimaro’s jade eyes now hold a gleam of ambition to match their Master’s. When Kimimaro fights, he defeats without mercy and with little effort. When he has perfected both levels of the curse mark Orochimaru rewards him with a platoon to command that soon rules over all of Otogakure’s hideouts both by reputation, and by fear.

And back in Juugo’s room, alone, Kimimaro presses their bodies together and drinks the salt from his skin, writhes into his scent. Juugo can’t bring himself to touch— _this is wrong, this is wrong_ —but Kimimaro will not let him deny _this_ urge.

The slim hands that soothe the monster inside him so easily can also wake him up; Kimimaro slides fingers and palm into the front of his pants until Juugo begs for it to stop, holding him tight against his chest and pressing his mouth to the zigzag of his hair.

“Please, _no_ …” he whispers, each time more desperate than the last.

The response is the same, lips against his collarbone. “Help me, Juugo.” Kimimaro maneuvers on top of him, angling their groins just so and rotating his hips. Insistent. Demanding.

Juugo shudders, and complies—what other choice does he have? He moves with him—against him—forward and back, unable to look his friend in the face. Kimimaro huffs soft moans over his heart, digging hands into the blankets beneath them when he reaches his climax. Juugo has learned he’s not permitted to stop before both of them find release; he cradles Kimimaro with his large body and maintains the friction until his thighs tremble, his fingers clutching into the back of Kimimaro’s linen shirt and bearing the silent shame of spilled seed, the ultimate transgression.

It ends with a caress on his dampened brow, Kimimaro stroking the unruly, copper hair from his face. Kimimaro’s expression befits one who has conquered, something sly, but ultimately satisfied, something undoubtedly learned from their Master. With minor rearranging they rest as before, although Juugo will never sleep when Kimimaro is near.

Only that, and the ache, remains the same.

♦

The sickness is something none of them have seen before; all are at a loss to diagnose the disease threatening all of Orochimaru’s plans.

Kabuto works long nights in the lab with a staff of six. Orochimaru keeps to his quarters, and Kimimaro is cut adrift. Juugo sticks close to him and watches the spark in his eyes dim from its characteristic brightness with each passing day.

When it’s clear Kimimaro’s ambition will never be fulfilled, the Sound Five become the Sound Four. When it’s clear the mission to assassinate the Kazekage will be Kimimaro’s last, Juugo shuts himself in the high-security cell where only two sets of keys exist, wretched with loss. When it’s clear that the pain will soon be too much for him, Kimimaro comes and unlocks the door, reclaims the spot in the crook of his arm and weeps in silent despair.

“Shhhhhh,” he whispers, though Kimimaro makes no noise. Juugo brushes the tears with the side of his thumb, so afraid, as always, of hurting him.

Kimimaro takes his hand and nuzzles his palm. “Juugo…” He blinks through fresh tears, though his voice is clear and strong. _“Help me.”_

And because the world has already ended once, and because this is the last time, and because it’s _Kimimaro_ —Juugo does.

♦

Lonely days all run together, until Juugo is startled by the noises of the locks on his door opening, startled even more to see Kimimaro’s face through the crack.

“You’re sick—why are they letting you out?”

Another person might notice the frailty of Kimimaro’s skin, or the effort it takes him to speak his mind. But what Juugo notices above all else is the glow of determination in Kimimaro’s eyes, brighter than it has ever been—and the sight stills all protest.

“I, the old container, will retrieve the new container—even if it costs me my life, I will complete this task and be _reborn_.”

If that could be true…

Juugo doesn’t say anything when Kimimaro thanks him and says goodbye. He senses the strength of Kimimaro’s will and lets him go, touched by the purity of a soul that still manages to shine through the accursed darkness and find a path to redemption.

Kimimaro closes the door, and shuts down the last of his hopes. Someone like Juugo will never know an honorable battle, will never die a warrior’s death.

Cure or no cure, the blood on his hands erased that possibility long ago.

♦

The rumors of the new container, Uchiha Sasuke, filter back to him. Orochimaru leaves the hideout in favor of another and puts a girl in charge. A month passes. Maybe more.

Juugo hears nothing of Kimimaro, but thinks he must be kept somewhere safe, hooked to machines that keep him alive. He thinks about what brought the two of them here, to Orochimaru, and thinks about how no one seems to accomplish their goals after serving their half of Orochimaru’s bargain. He thinks he should be more angered by this—by the lack of a cure, by Kimimaro’s insidious illness, by their mutual abandonment—and yet he’s still there, still alive, still obediently offering up the inside of his elbow and what flows in his veins.

_Why?_ What is the purpose of his existence? Surely there must be some greater meaning to his life other than helping Orochimaru create a horde of copies from the enzymes in his blood, and then culling the weak from the useful with every rampage?

Where does the madness end?

For him, it doesn’t. Three years go by, the rages explode from within his body and there is no one there to stop him. Whether he has warning or not, the blackness overrides the part of him who won’t lift a hand against another living thing and forces him to enjoy the bloodbath, to inhale the destruction and laugh with the euphoria of countless murders.

Somewhere beneath roiling emotions and the frenzy of battle, Juugo knows that a cure does exist, or did—but Orochimaru took that away from him too.

Really, it doesn’t matter. _Nothing_ matters. Nothing but the giddiness of guessing who the next victim will be—boy or girl? Boy or girl?

Juugo laughs, and pictures it—screams of terror, limbs cracked and twisted out of shape. Boy? Girl? Boy? Girl?

Boy or girl, he’ll kill them anyway, and satisfy all the urges at once.

The locks on the door suddenly click and ignite the adrenaline in his limbs, the rapid thumps of his heart accompany the surge of excitement and heady anticipation—boy or girl? Boy or girl—which is it gonna be?

He hears two voices, and his eyes sparkle with the lust of a psychopath, skin crawling with the need to strike out.

Boy or girl? Boy or girl? There’s one of each out there, so which will it be? Which one is gonna open that door?

_Which one is going to die tonight?_

The door to his prison cracks open—

Ω


End file.
